James P. Roberts

James P. Roberts

BIO & PUBLICATIONS:Robert has had nine books published to date in the fields of dark fantasy (BOURLAND), poetry (DERNE RUNES and SPIRIT FIRE), literary non-fiction (FAMOUS WISCONSIN AUTHORS, RETURN TO DERLETH: SELECTED ESSAYS, HAUNTED VOICES: SELECTED POETRY & ART FROM LITHUANIA) and baseball history (HOWLIN’ WOLF!: A FAN'S HISTORY OF THE HIGHS AND LOWS DURING FIVE STORMY YEARS WITH THE MADISON BLACK WOLF). Previous appearances in The Baltimore Review, Urbanus, Red Owl Magazine, Requiem, and a few dozen other ’zines. Past President and current Board Member of the August Derleth Society and very active in the Wisconsin literary scene. Also sends his alter ego, The Captain, out some evenings to perform at musical venues in the Madison area where he plays the charango, balalaika, mandolin, guitar, and throat-sings.

Poetry

To the Person Who Has Just Bought My Book

When you take this book home tonight, to sit in your lounge-chairwith the television turned off, and begin to read it, slowlyopening the cover, holding it up to your nose to smell the scentof fresh ink and paper. You will either peruse a few pagesand then put it aside to go to bed, or, perhaps, the storydraws you in, by degrees, until you are trapped and unableto put it down. Morning will come, the sun risingas you turn the last page and close the book with a sigh.

When you have finished reading this book, having wrungevery last ounce of enjoyment, and have now made readyto place it on the shelf with the other thousands of books, there to rest until, one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year, maybe not until a day comes when you decide to moveto another house. Then, you will see my book and wonderif it would be better to get rid of it. This I ask of you:

Burn it! Scatter the ashes on the steps of a library. For my worst recurring nightmare is to walk into a used bookstoreand see my book, with its personalized autograph, sitting therein a mish-mash jumble, discarded like an old Raggedy Ann doll, my muscular words rendered useless as yesterday's stale bread.

Fishing Another Poet out of the East River

I Midwest farm boy gone to college, puffed by professors, his poetry pristine. Sent in scented envelopes to ready-made acceptances by those mid-town Manhattan mavens who dwell at Starbucks, cell phone grafted to Pythagorean ear, eyes frozen on his PowerBook. Then the poetry changed, osmosis brought on by a chance sidetrack through Greenwich Village. Lost, he stopped in a seedy café to ask if anyone knew where Putnam’s was, and found himself on stage at a poetry slam. Street people poured out their vibrant anger and the slang became a virus under his skin. He did not show up for work the next day … Or the day after. His fifteenth-floor flat overlooking Central Park grew dust, the milk soured in the refrigerator, The cat died of starvation. The cops came, busting down the door, looked around, and left, taking what they would find.

II He slept in a cardboard box in a filthy alley and listened to the prostitutes at work— and he wrote about it and distributed his poems free to passersby. He wandered through the darkest corners, got beaten up, robbed, pissed on— and he wrote about it and pasted the poems on the walls of subway trains. His hair grew long and stringy, his teeth wobbled in gray gums, his eyes saw another world beyond human comprehension— and he wrote about it and jammed the poems into his mouth, chewed and swallowed and vomited up his sickness and despair. In a wordless epiphany, he flung himself off the bridge into the East River on a night too cold to survive.